Biography

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.

After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Bad Sister (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville" and her performance in "Bad Sister" didn't impress.

In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was The Man Who Played God (1932). She became a star after this appearance, known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.

In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.

Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award win for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler, and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.

She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.

She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.

In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.

Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.

Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Meredy <meredy@meredy.com> and Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu> and Denny Jackson

Without question, Bette Davis made some of the best films in Hollywood's golden era, between 1934 and 1956, delivering many indelible performances, arguably more than any actor of her generation.

The acting profession today is not the same as it was in Davis' time. Acting is no longer learn-as-you-go. Although Davis' education began at a dramatic academy, her actual education was working with established actors in off-Broadway plays. The time-worn formula then was toil until you're "discovered," transported to Hollywood, and given a part in a movie. For Davis that was "Bad Sister" in 1931 at Universal, an inauspicious start, but George Arliss saw something in her that no one else could, which wasn't sex appeal or glamour. It was something much better: untapped talent and a willingness to learn. And learn she did, and trudged her way through contractual obligations to reach something worthy of her talents: Mildred Rogers.

Beginning with her first really good film, "The Man Who Played God," with Arliss, who regarded her his protégé, Davis secured a seven-year contract with Warners, where her career progressed with forgettable films, like "The Cabin in the Cotten" (best remembered today for the line "I'd love to kiss 'ya but I just washed my hair") and "Parachute Jumper." Then casting began for "Of Human Bondage" in 1934. Davis begged and won temporary release from her contract to play Mildred at RKO, the role that would make her a star. For this part, she learned to speak Cockney, impressing her costar Leslie Howard (affecting a believable English accent would serve her well in later years). This repellent, unsympathetic woman was a challenge for Davis, which she took on with blind will and determination, managing not only to portray Mildred convincingly, but make audiences both despise and pity her. The Davis trademark took shape: she is the woman audiences love to hate, a trait that stuck, even though not all the women were bad. She was a write-in vote for best actress in 1934 (the last time that was possible), but lost to Claudette Colbert. Back at Warners, her first Oscar came in 1935 for "Dangerous," which she always thought a consolation for having lost the previous year.

For three years, Davis-a Yankee trouper-waded through dregs at Warners until she could no longer accept substandard roles. She left for England and sued Warners to get out of her contract. She lost the suit, but was offered better films, most notably "The Petrified Forest" in 1936, reuniting with Leslie Howard, and "That Certain Woman" in 1937, costarring her favorite actor Henry Fonda. Eventually, she was given the lead in "Jezebel"(1938), opposite Fonda again-the film that began her career-altering relationship with director William Wyler and won her a second Oscar. Of the films that followed, many would bring memorable, iconic performances, demonstrating the remarkable range of her talents. No one more so than Leslie Crosbie in "The Letter" (1940), again for Wyler. For this film, he wanted Davis to tone down the trademarked mannerisms and wide-eyed stares for a subtler approach (he had her wear eyeglasses in many scenes). At first she resisted, but later admitted he was right. As a long-suffering, plantation wife, prim on the surface but yearning underneath, she is revelatory-it's a controlled and beautifully underplayed performance, perhaps her best, and earned her a fifth Oscar nomination.

Davis always challenged herself to play against type, never afraid to be unlikable, or ugly in temperament and appearance. She tackled roles that other women might have refused to play.

Like Garbo's Camille and Crawford's Mildred Pierce, Margo Channing is the role Davis was born to play. She might have been playing herself, some have said, but this was a woman Davis knew well and knew she could play, although it was first offered to Colbert. This is Davis for the ages, both camp caricature and genuine midlife crisis. It earned her a ninth Oscar nomination.

If the apogee is Margo, than everything else is post "All About Eve." In the years after 1950, subsequent roles did not live up to the standards set by this extraordinary film, and her acting choices careened, from noir villainess, to hasbeen Oscar winner (a tenth nomination), to Elizabeth I (again), to Catherine the Great, to evil twins, to worn-down Bronx housewife, to Apple Annie. And then the forays into Grand Giuignol horror, the last resort for aged actors in the 1960s. But for Davis this was yet another triumph (for Crawford, too).

An all-out duel between sibling grotesques, "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane"(1960) was a critical and box-office success, earning Davis her final Oscar nomination. This is a role she inhabits (see Lynn Redgrave struggle to find her footing in the unfortunate remake). Davis is captivating-just try to look away: the hideous maquillage (her own choice), the boozed-up voice, the feeble singing, the joyful rages, the child freak dancing on the beach with ice cream cones. Weird and sad, sad, sad. Who among her peers could have set aside ego to play this woman? One might argue that Davis had laid the groundwork for Ruth Gordon's Minnie Castevet in 1968.

Much has been written about the so-called feud between Davis and Crawford, most of it fabricated and enhanced over the years by those who knew them and thought they knew them. The feud was more likely a clever marketing ploy sanctioned by both stars, who ably played their parts well. Maybe too well. After all, Davis resented Crawford for supposedly campaigning against her nomination and accepting the award for Ann Bancroft who was absent at the ceremony. The two actors really had no reason to dislike each other, as they were both under contract at separate studios and never in competition for the same parts. There were, in fact, more reasons for them to like each other: they were both career-driven and dedicated to their profession, unafraid to confront powerful studio heads for more demanding parts in prestigious projects. It is well documented that Davis admired Crawford's work ethic and considered her talent equal to her own (it was Miriam Hopkins she considered her inferior).

Davis was known to have had lasting friendships with fellow actors she respected, like Claude Raines (also a lover), Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Olivia de Haviland, Mary Astor, and Geraldine Fitzgerald. Davis championed the careers of Astor and Fitzgerald, choosing them as costars in crucial roles (Astor won an Oscar and Fitzgerald, the National Board of Review). These actors were, after all, her colleagues at Warners.

In those days, working at Warners and MGM was like living on opposite ends of the earth. Davis and Crawford were both stars at their respective studios, and audiences knew what to expect from each: it was either a "Davis film" or a "Crawford film"-the twain never met. But it was Davis that audiences most loved to see and loved being surprised by. Perhaps that was so because she wasn't an unattainable beauty like Crawford, but someone in whom audiences could see themselves. She was for them the epitome of the acting profession and always more than just a movie star. Yet, she wore both identities well.

Davis remains still today the subject of debate and discussion, more so than most of her peers, whose careers have been given the certified stamp of approval, like that of Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyke, Vivian Leigh, and certainly Joan Crawford. Some may question her choices in the years after "All About Eve," but those who do must remember that Davis was, for better or worse, a working actor her entire life, in theater first, then film, then theater again, then finally television. But even the small screen could not contain her, nor diminish her commitment to acting. Although she seemed without discretion at times, she returned to form in "Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter," with Gena Rowlands in 1979. It is a remarkable testament to Davis' evolution as an actor as there exists no equivalent to this performance in her body of work. For it she was awarded a Primetime Emmy.

While a few of her performances over the years may have veered into self parody (even Crawford could not escape this trap), the incredible span of her career cancels out any dismissive commentaries or bad jokes. By all accounts, she was at times temperamental, opinionated, and, with age, imperious, but those are well-earned qualities for someone who was never going to win the hearts of audiences. In the end she was content to win their respect.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: J. Greco